Chapter 949 — The Hundred Methods of Slaying This Man

"This is the twenty-sixth time Heavenly Venerable Hao has killed me.

" Shen Mu drank his tea in silence. The brew had steeped too long and gone thin. He set the cup down and stared blankly, lost in thought. "Twenty-six times, and not once has he used the same divine art to kill me. Remarkable. .

.

Since coming to the Heavenly Court I have been busy with this and that, and rarely have I had a moment's leisure.

I wonder what good teas there are to drink in the Heavenly Court? The Heavenly Court is where the powerful and the noble gather; their tea must surely be finer than anything in the lower realms.

" The notion took hold of him: he would buy some tea leaves and carry them down to the lower realms, a gift for his closest friends. And just then, within the illusion, Heavenly Venerable Hao killed him once more.

"Only, what is the currency of the Heavenly Court? With Jingping's Great Feng coins I could certainly buy nothing at all.

" Shen Mu could not help but miss Xue Hu'er and Si Yunxiang. If those two were here, would he ever fret over money? "Before long, Her Highness the Empress will build the Spirit-Energy Transfer Bridge, joining the Origin Realm to the Heavenly Court, and then I shall have money.

" He narrowed his eyes and rested his spirit.

"I have now died fifty-one times at Heavenly Venerable Hao's hands, and he has used fifty-one different divine arts, never once repeating himself.

Truly formidable. Who would have thought that so many flaws lay hidden in my own arts and techniques. " Admiration rose unbidden in his heart.

The onlooker sees the game most clearly, as the saying goes; a man can scarcely see his own weaknesses and flaws.

To a proud man like Shen Mu, his arts and divine powers already stood as perfect beyond compare, with not a single flaw to be found. Yet in another's eyes, many flaws might remain. Heavenly Venerable Hao was a Heavenly Venerable, after all—the second person in this world to open the divine treasury, second only to Heavenly Venerable Yu.

He had studied for so many years and created the Hundred Methods of Slaying Mu, which proved that at least a hundred flaws lurked in Shen Mu's arts.

To have so brilliant a man help perfect one's arts—what greater fortune could there be!

Every time, his first words were the same. "Heavenly Venerable Mu does not seem the least bit surprised. " Yet in Heavenly Venerable Hao's heart, astonishment and confusion only deepened.

The scene gave him a feeling of profound familiarity, a familiarity that grew with every moment, as though he had lived through it before—and not merely once!

Ever since he obtained the Grand Primordial Stone, Shen Mu's consciousness had grown stronger and stronger. Even before coming to the Heavenly Court his consciousness had been formidable: he could find the flaw in the consciousness arts of Zuo Shaobi and Yan Shaoqing, dragging Yan Shaoqing, the Heavenly Court's foremost master of consciousness, into a cycle of illusion from which he could not tell true from false. Now his consciousness was several times stronger than it had been then.

The Creator's Grand Subtlety Superior Consciousness, together with the Grand Primordial Stone and the Undying Consciousness of the Three Primordial Spirits, had driven his progress at a pace beyond imagining. And this time he was not relying on consciousness arts alone, but also employing the still-unripe art of Unchanging, turning the little pavilion into a space of Unchanging! Within that space of Unchanging, Heavenly Venerable Hao cycled round and round, without end!

Besides the space of Unchanging, Shen Mu also invoked the Immeasurable Kalpa Sutra of the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha—not to enter a dream himself and become a world within a dream, but to plunge this Shen Mu clone of Heavenly Venerable Hao into a world of dreams. "The eighty-first time.

" Shen Mu cleared away the tea things and went to the shore of the Jade Sea below the pavilion to wash the cups and the pot, thinking leisurely: "I have died eighty-one times at Heavenly Venerable Hao's hands, each time slain flawlessly, and never once by the same death.

He has indeed broken my Kalpa-Raising Sword, my Kalpa-Opening Sword, and my other arts. This fellow is formidable indeed. Nineteen methods remain.

.

. " Then, suddenly, his brow creased. A faint tremor passed through the space within the pavilion; clearly Heavenly Venerable Hao had sensed something! "The art of Unchanging I grasped from the peach-wood hairpin and the ghost ship is still too shallow. Trapping him is easy, but my art is far from as perfect as Heavenly Venerable Ling's.

" Alarm stirred in Shen Mu's heart: "After eighty-one cycles, the flaws have grown greater and greater.

The thread of consciousness Heavenly Venerable Hao hid within his clone has likely already spotted them!

" Within the space of Unchanging, Heavenly Venerable Hao struck Shen Mu down. Shen Mu lay on the ground, every bone in his body broken, slowly breathing his last.

Heavenly Venerable Hao stared at the corpse, the doubt in his eyes thickening. At that moment, matter flowed backward, returning to its original state; the memories in the mind of Heavenly Venerable Hao's Shen Mu clone were washed away, and all was as before.

He stood at the edge of the pavilion gazing at the Jade Sea, and across its waters Shen Mu came walking. The doubt on Heavenly Venerable Hao's face deepened.

He glanced back at the pavilion—within it lay a severed foot, dripping with blood.

He turned back to the Shen Mu walking over the sea. That Shen Mu was missing a foot, yet his stride remained utterly steady!

Bewilderment showed on his face; then bewilderment faded, and his three eyes grew clearer and clearer.

"You dare play tricks before me? What audacity!

" A consciousness of incomparable might came crashing in from beyond the heavens, striking the space of Unchanging around the pavilion! At once, in the eyes of Heavenly Venerable Hao's Shen Mu clone, the world around him shattered and crumbled away, and the true Jade Pool appeared before him!

Cold sweat sprang out on his forehead. He sensed that something was amiss, and his true body sent a bolt of consciousness from afar to break Shen Mu's spell—only thus did he escape falling back into the cycle!

Yet his true body's consciousness, crashing down as it did, would surely alert the other powers of the Heavenly Court.

Once alerted, they would come to investigate, and he would never again have the chance to kill Shen Mu silently and take his place!

His plan to fashion a new Heavenly Venerable Mu and replace Shen Mu collapsed then and there; his rivals in the Heavenly Court would never give him a second chance! Heavenly Venerable Hao was enraged.

The Shen Mu in the pavilion whirled about and saw Shen Mu standing outside, watching him with a half-smile. Heavenly Venerable Hao quickly composed himself and smiled. "Heavenly Venerable Mu, what skill.

Your elder brother admires you. " "You flatter me, you flatter me. " Shen Mu said with concern, "Heavenly Venerable Hao was not startled, I hope?

Of your Hundred Methods of Slaying Mu you have demonstrated only eighty-two; eighteen remain unseen. Shall we go through it again?

" Heavenly Venerable Hao's heart went cold, but he smiled. "I think that will not be necessary.

" "I think it is.

" From between Shen Mu's brows, a sword elixir drifted slowly out of his third eye, slowly reshaping in the air into a precious sword.

Shen Mu smiled. "You cannot get away, and you are fated to die here. Why not display the remaining eighteen arts of Slaying Mu?

This time I will not use consciousness arts.

I give you the chance.